Day 10—Cheikha

She travelled, with her deff gently wrapped in a bag on the subway. She also had a small riqq. Always comfortable walking shoes. Right now on her iPod Cheb Hamdi was playing, but soon it would be Les Mecs de Maghreb and the Belgian dubstep DJ Coors Light. Normally there were more musical instruments, but she was keeping it minimal on that day. She was always modern and fashionable, often even avant-garde, but she kept the small pieces of her tribal jewelry close to her body. Some pieces she would sew in the insides of her dresses.

She had just returned from a tour with one of her favorite bands. She had been overjoyed when they had asked her to join with percussion and backup vocals. Always rolling a suitcase behind me, she thought. This is me. She finally unlocked her apartment. It felt so foreign, as it always did on these days when she returned from a tour. Her cockatiel Terry perched, sleeping, head nestled. Just then the phone rang. It was Amara Rainier.

“How’d you like to come teach raï in New Orleans for the world’s second biggest bellydance event, Tribal Pathways?”

“Absoluement! Are you kidding?? Yes!” They hashed out business details. She had called because the deadline for booking instructors was nigh and Cheikha had been absent from town.
Her life was a strange gilded cage, but she knew that it was time to teach others. “In losing this, all these dancers will lose, too.” Most of them didn’t even know that the information existed. Who else knew the village stories? Who else knew these fertility dances? This did not exist in the West. Who else knew the legends of what happened when you decided to descend into the darkest part of your soul? She would tell that story to her students, and all would remain dead silent throughout. It was not a ritual they had in most places.


“They need a shaman for the women here.”

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